Kukla's Korner Hockey

Defenseman Stephane Robidas broke five sticks Sunday in a 3-2 shootout win over Calgary. Robidas tapes three sticks for every game, and went through all three of them quickly. He then used the two practice sticks he has in the practice bag, and also broke those. He finished the game using Philip Larsen’s stick _ one of the few right-handed shots on the team like Robidas….

``It was a tough game, that’s for sure,’’ he said. ``I don’t know what happened. Sometimes, you just get a bad batch.’‘

Robidas said that one of the sticks was hit with a shot and that nicked the shaft and caused it to break, but said he didn’t remember any other strange happenings with the sticks. He said the plan is that a new batch of sticks will be in Vancouver today and will be ready for morning skate on Tuesday.

Composite sticks are still essentially hand-made entities—the fiberglass, Kevlar and carbon fiber are all wrapped around a steel mandrill, then they’re placed in a vacuum bag and the air’s pumped out as various epoxies and resins are pumped in to impregnate the fabric, and sometimes those bags remain and sometimes they’re removed as the sticks are placed into industrial ovens and baked for specific periods of time and specific temperatures depending on the stick’s desired performance.

Then they’re usually fused to blades which have been built-and-baked in the same manner and they’re painted with protective coatings and plain old cosmetic colors and have decals applied to them as they dry out.

If any of those steps are messed up, or if the affects of weather changes outside the plant in terms of temperature, humidity and barometric pressure aren’t accounted for in the baking times, the sticks can turn out “bad.”

The other problem is that while companies like Easton and Warrior at least build sticks adjacent to the U.S. in dedicated plants with high quality control in Tijuana, Mexico, and companies like Sher-Wood/TPS still actually make their high-end sticks in Canada, most sticks are made in China these days, and being shipped across oceans and then across the U.S. or Canada to retail outlets can take its toll on sticks as well.